Hello Greenspire Community –
We are excited to have students back on campus beginning this Tuesday, January 26th!
Remember that there is no school (in-person or remote) on Monday, January 25th for Records Day. Additionally, during this phase of our return to in-person learning plan, students are on campus for classes Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Students are not on campus on Wednesdays, but will have opportunities for remote electives and other special events. Those will be announced in the near future.
STUDENT SELF-CHECKS AT HOME FOR SYMPTOMS
It is imperative for families that have students returning to in-person learning to conduct daily self-checks at home for COVID-19 symptoms. The county health department is reporting an average of 1-2 school associated cases per day for K-12. Since some schools returned to in-person learning on January 4th, there have been 34 school aged cases and in 20 of those cases, students were sent to school during their infectious period resulting in the quarantine of over 300 students and staff members. Almost all of those 34 cases contracted COVID-19 from large family gatherings or gatherings of students outside of school at events such as sledding. Those students then went to school, exposing others. We need your help to make sure that we continue having a COVID-19 free school building, particularly during these next several weeks.
Being a small school, just a few staff members (two or three) having to quarantine will force us back into remote learning for whatever period of time is required by the health department. Thank you in advance for your work to make sure our students can attend school in-person.
If your child is experiencing any of the symptoms below, please keep them home from school. If a student experiences any of these symptoms while at school, they will immediately be sent home.
**If your child is returning to in-person learning, please remember they should bring a refillable water bottle to school, wear a mask, and dress appropriately for the weather.
EARLY RELEASE JANUARY 29th & FEBRUARY 19th
Finally…some good news!
The county health department and Munson with the assistance of the National Guard have partnered together to vaccinate all of the educators in the county next week. That is about 2,500 people. They did their best to minimize the disruptions to the school day by scheduling vaccinations on Friday afternoon/evening and Saturday. This will also help to minimize disruptions in three weeks if anyone experienced side effects from the second dose as they will experience those side effects over the weekend.
We were assigned time slots and about half our faculty/staff have appointments into the last hour of the school day on Friday, January 29th and Friday, February 19th. As a result, we will dismiss at 2:00 pm on both of those dates. Students will need to be picked-up at 2:00 pm. An early release will allow us to maximize in-person learning time compared to a half-day or remote learning day. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.
Additional Items
- If you were not able to attend our first Greenspire 101 Webinar last Thursday, the event was recorded and will be posted this week. Please look out for an email from Sarah with more information!
- Pizza Lunches are back! The first pizza lunch will be Monday, February 1st. Pizza slices are $1.50/each.
- We hope that you have seen our recent articles in the Record Eagle and The Ticker about our new high school program. Here is the link to The Ticker article…https://www.traverseticker.com/news/greenspire-opens-enrollment-for-ninth-tenth-grades/
- Remote students and parents/guardians will receive an email from me on Monday with your Google Classroom codes and Zoom meeting links.
- Congratulations to Kris who received a Northwestern Lower MiSTEM Network Classroom Mini-Grants of $2,000. These funds will be used to purchase supplies for a quarter three project between Kris, Emily, and Tejas.
Have a good week!
Robert Walker, EdS